My Creative Year in the Army

In his new memoir, My Creative Year in the Army, David Madden tells a story of creativity and conflict.

In 1954 during the Korean Civil War, when nineteen-year-old Madden showed up at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, he set in motion a series of creative acts and conflicts, sometimes comic.

A romantic, an idealist, an agnostic, and a liberal, he had actively attacked racism, censorship, the death penalty, and tyranny.

During basic training, he befriended Rooks, a disturbed farm boy, and Jacob, ...